BAH
191
sub-settlement have been preferred, it migbt perhaps be inferred that the rights of under-proprietors are very strong in this Sub-settlements. Tte district, at any rate in the imaginations of the claim^^^^ themselves. No idea could be more erroneous. The fact that 570 or nearly one-third of the whole number of claims were withdrawn before being called on for hearing, is of itself a strong indication of the weakness of the general run of the cases of this description ; and of the 1,003 which were dismissed on trial, far the larger number were consigned to the records without the statement of the defendant being recorded. very'weak!'^
°
'^'^^'^^
The plaintiff's own deposition was sufficient to show that he had no shadow of claim to any such right as is conferred by a sub-settlement. Many who had never held any sort of proprietary connection with the village came forward in the hope perhaps that they might get something. In the northern parganas scarcely a single claim to sub-settlement was preferred save in estates which had been conferred °^ ^^^^^ grantees, and in which perhaps the claimants thJnortheni pargauas™ took this mode of showing that they did not altogether approve of the change of masters. In the north, however, as will be gathered from a perusal of the histo^^^^ sketch, the head-men of the villages, where they Keaaon of this existed at all, had no grounds whatever for imagining that they had any rights in the land other than such as they had obtained through the favour and protection of the taluqdar, for nearly the whole of this part of the country dates its permanent colonisation from such a recent date that each man's family history is known to his neighbour, and there is no room for a vague appeal to that ancient and ancestral connection with the village which is generally advanced as the real ground on which a decree is claimed.
In the south, on the other hand, the villages have been long established, and any member of a family more influential thaa The conditions in the the rest in the hamlet who could look back upon pa^ganas difgenerations during which perhaps the village may fere^nt^™ have changed hands more than once, while his ancestors retained their homesteads and their position as head-men, would be far more likely to persuade himself that he was possessed of such a right as the sarkdr would recognise. In the Ikauna and Bahraich parganas, however, claims were preferred which undoutedly were based on bona fide rights claims in Bah-
The
raich and Ikauna. acquired in the villages in older times. these rights has been alluded to in the historial sketch.
Of the 173
The
origin of
claims to sub-settlement which were either settled by compromise or decreed in favor of the plaintiffs, 168 were in pargana His^mpur and 127 in one estate, namely,
Eesults of the litigation in sub-settlements,
IMqa Ranipur. The villages comprised in this estate belong to the Raikwar community mentioned in historical sketch and chapter on tenures, and were only included in the Mahant Gurnardin Dfe's qubdliat a few years Some of these were mortgaged to the taluqdar and prior to annexation.
